🎾 GOAT: Serena Williams’s Next Grand Slams

FemWealth Issue #73

Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!

In the Spotlight 🏆

“Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me. A few years ago I quietly started Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm. Soon after that, I started a family. I want to grow that family.”

“Someone who looks like me needs to start writing the big checks.” - Serena Williams

Tennis legend and one of the best-paid athletes, Serena Williams, has announced her decision to “evolve away” from the sport she dominated and shaped for 25 years to focus on her family and early-stage investing.

Serena Williams @serenawilliams

A must read.

Vogue Magazine @voguemagazine

In Vogue’s September issue, @serenawilliams prepares to say farewell to tennis on her own terms and in her own words. “It’s the hardest thing that I could ever imagine,” she says. “I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next” https://t.co/6Zr0UXVTH1 https://t.co/YtGtcc18a9

Williams started angel investing nearly a decade ago and has since backed 16 startups that are now unicorns, including Tonal, Impossible Foods and MasterClass.

“I started investing nine years ago, and I really fell in love with early stage, whether it’s pre-seed funding, where you’re investing in just an idea, or seed, where the idea has already been turned into a product.”

Now she wants to focus more on her role as founder and managing partner of Serena Ventures, an investment firm she launched in 2014. Earlier this year, the firm co-led by Alison Rapaport Stillman raised $111 million of outside financing for its inaugural fund. So far, it has backed 55 companies, 80% of which are women- and minority-led startups. 

Serena Williams and Alison Rapaport Stillman, Serena Ventures ©

Williams also owns equity in women’s soccer club, Angel City FC, and NFL’s Miami Dolphins.

Serena Williams’s career in numbers:

23 Grand Slam titles —a record for any player (of any gender) in the Open era. She’s the second player in history (after Steffi Graf) to achieve the career Golden Slam (winning all four major titles plus the Olympic gold medal) in singles and the first tennis player in history to win a career Golden Slam in both singles and doubles. Even more remarkable, she won the 2017 Australian Open while two months pregnant with her daughter Olympia!

73 Singles titles

186 consecutive weeks spent as world number one on the WTA rankings — a record she shares with Steffi Graf

4 Olympic gold medals — a record she shares with her sister, Venus Williams

$94.6 million in career prize money on the WTA Tour

$340 million from endorsements, appearances and other business endeavors

$260 million estimated net worth.

Serena Williams On Her Legacy in Sports and Beyond:

“I’d like to think that thanks to opportunities afforded to me, women athletes feel that they can be themselves on the court. They can play with aggression and pump their fists. They can be strong yet beautiful. They can wear what they want and say what they want and kick butt and be proud of it all.”

“Over the years, I hope that people come to think of me as symbolizing something bigger than tennis. I admire Billie Jean because she transcended her sport. I’d like it to be: Serena is this and she’s that and she was a great tennis player and she won those slams.”

Read more:

Serena Williams Says Farewell to Tennis On Her Own Terms—And In Her Own Words | The 9 Greatest Moments of Serena Williams’s Tennis Career (Vogue)

Serena Williams Heads Into Retirement As A Tennis Icon — And One Of America’s Richest Self-Made Women (Forbes)

Serena Williams’ co-investor shares what comes next for the athlete’s venture firm (Fortune $)

Why Serena Williams’s Retirement Is Different (Atlantic)

Serena Williams became a champion again — for working moms (Washinton Post)

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FemWealth Favourites ❤️

💸 Prellis Biologics Raises $35M in Series C Funding - The San Francisco, CA-based biotherapeutics company founded by Dr. Melanie Matheu (previously CEO, now Chief Technology Officer and Board member) plans to expand its proprietary human immune system-based drug discovery and development platform.

💸 Fora Raises $13.5M in Series A Funding - The NYC-based tech-forward travel agency, co-founded by Henley Vazquez, is on a mission to empower 100,000 travel entrepreneurs by curating the most incredible experiences for travelers. Kirsten Green’s Forerunner Ventures co-led the round.

💸 Invisible Universe Animation Studio Closes $12 Million Series A Funding Round - The studio is founded and led by Tricia Biggio, previously a content executive for Snap and MGM Television. The round was led by Katelin Holloway’s Seven Seven Six, with participation from Serena Williams and actress Jennifer Aniston.

“We are out to build the Pixar of the internet. We are out to incubate the next generation’s IP doing it in an internet-first way by growing and building community on platforms where people are spending more of their time. We’re trying to reverse-engineer the way IP is born by growing it on social first.” - Tricia Biggio

“We’re seeing the power of can’t-live-without-it-IP and how it’s driving the growth and retention of audiences regardless of the platform and igniting potential for franchise expansions. I saw the Pixar magic up close, and this company is building the same kind of unforgettable IP with an innovative approach that reduces both time and capital while embracing audience feedback.” - Katelin Holloway, Investor and a board member of Invisible Universe

💸 Nanopath Raises $10M in Series A Funding to Develop and Commercialize Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Women’s Health - The molecular diagnostics company, co-founded by Amogha Tadimety (CEO) and Alison Burklund, Ph.D. (CTO), has raised $10M in Series A funding, to support the development and commercialization of it biosensing platform for pelvic and gynecologic infections diagnostics. Read more here.

Amogha Tadimety and Alison Burklund, Co-founders of Nanopath ©

“Nanopath’s mission is deeply rooted in improving women’s health and even more broadly, health equity for all. We envision Nanopath’s technology as the go-to platform for routine women’s health screening, allowing for clinically actionable diagnosis within a single office visit.” - Amogha Tadimety

💸 Selena Gomez’s Mental Health Startup Gets $100 Million Valuation - Wondermind, co-founded by Selena Gomez, Hollywood producer (and Gomez’s mother) Mandy Teefey and Daniella Pierson, the founder of The Newsette. The $5 million funding round was led by Serena Ventures and joined by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital.

💸 She Matters app now helps Black women with a variety of postpartum health issues - The company, co-founded and led by Jade Kearney, has raised a $1.5 million pre-seed round. It aims to expand the platform to include other groups of underrepresented women, including Latina, LGBTQ and Native American.

“We just want to take the secret sauce that we have for Black women where we’ve made Black women feel comfortable and given them the tools to advocate for themselves, and we want to use that same approach for other folks.”

💸 SaaS startup Stimulus closes oversubscribed $2.5 million seed round - The company founded and led by Tiffanie Stanard helps businesses cut costs by avoiding mismatched suppliers while introducing diverse vendors to companies that might have overlooked them.

“You have exposure from household names to smaller businesses run by underrepresented founders. It’s going from discovery to matching in real time.” - Tiffanie Stanard

💸 With a €43M EU grant and €1.2M from a VC, this startup plans to turn CO2 emissions into gold - The Copenhagen-based biotech company SecondCircle is co-founded by Stephanie Redl.

☁️ Meet The Women CEOs Of The 2022 Cloud 100 List - Features Laura Behrens Wu, CEO of Shippo, Mathilde Collin, CEO of Front, Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva, and more.

🎤 Demo day: how to deliver a winning pitch to investors

“The more that you can demonstrate that you’ve got the right people and you’ve got the right execution power, then the more you’re a safe bet.” - Arosha Brouwer, co-founder and CEO of Quan

VC: 💸 Urban Innovation Fund, VMG Catalyst among female-led firms raising new funds - Led by Clara Brenner and Julie Lein, Urban Innovation Fund has closed with commitments of $101 million for its Fund III and $20 million Opportunity Fund to invest in companies building technology to shape the future of cities. VMG Catalyst, led by Brooke Kiley has raised $400 million for its Fund II to back commerce-focused startups.

🙌🏼 Investor network Sie Ventures wants to plug the funding gap for female founders. It just opened entries for its 3rd program cohort. (Business Insider $) - Founded and led by Triin Linamagi and Nicole Velho, Sie Ventures helps women founders in the fintech, sustainability, and healthcare sectors to raise funding.

Media & Creator Economy: 💌 Meet The 27-Year-Old Latinx Entrepreneur Who Is Now Worth $220 Million - Features Daniella Pierson, the now 27-year-old founder of women-focused newsletter company The Newsette (started when Pierson was 19), and one of the wealthiest self made women in the US. She is also a co-founder and co-CEO of the mental health startup Wondermind with singer and actress Selena Gomez and Mandy Teefey (they just got funded, see the Startups section).

👏🏽 Living Her ‘Destiny’: How Yvette Noel-Schure Parlayed Her Sony Success Into An Entrepreneurial Dream - Features publicist and entrepreneur Yvette Noel-Schure, the secret force behind Beyonce’s empire for the past 25 years.

✨ One of TikTok’s Biggest Stars Roasts Dudes for Their Misogyny, Racism, and Fatphobia - Features Drew Afualo, “TikTok’s misogyny watchdog” who is using trolls’ tactics against them. She has 7.6 million followers on the platform.

🤓 Kyla Scanlon explains the economy, inflation, and the stock market so you can actually understand it - Features Kyla Scanlon, a multi-platforms content creator and “the coolest econ nerd on the internet.”

Culture: 🎶 How Pinar Toprak Became The First Female Composer To Score A Billion-Dollar Film - The Turkish-born composer Pinar Toprak is the creator of the score for Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel.

“Especially growing up in the ‘90s in Istanbul, Turkey – it wasn't a very common thing for a Turkish woman to say, ‘I want to be a film composer.”

“The biggest thing that a young person can do for themselves is figuring out what lights them up. What is something you do that makes you feel like you get lost in it and lose track of time? What feels fulfilling? Once you know this, you can increase your odds of success by focusing on one obstacle at a time.” - Pinar Toprak

👏🏽 With ‘Abbott Elementary,’ Sheryl Lee Ralph is finally getting her flowers - Features actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, who got her first Emmy nomination at age 65 for her role in “Abbott Elementary.”

🎶 Roll call! Here are the 29 iconic Black women Beyoncé celebrates on her ‘Break My Soul’ remix - Break My Soul (The Queens Remix), a new version of the lead single from Beyonce’s seventh studio album, “Renaissance” samples Madonna’s 1990 hit “Vogue.” Beyoncé honors Black female singers who have influenced multiple genres of music in the past and a few in the present, including Bessie Smith, Betty Davis, Grace Jones and Alicia Keys.

Sports: 💪 ‘Invest in women’: Female athletes changing landscape on ownership in professional sports

⚽ Angel City’s debut season: How stars like Natalie Portman are building soccer's next big thing

🙌🏼 German Chancellor Scholz Steps Up Campaign to Abolish Gender Pay Gap in Sports

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What I’m Reflecting On 💭

FAR FROM HOME. One year after the fall of Kabul, Afghan women are attempting to build new lives abroad - A global team of female journalists and photographers tell the stories of eight Afghan women who are building new lives, from São Paulo, Brazil, to Dublin, Ireland.

How Abortion Bans Will Stifle Health Care Innovation

“The legal and policy restrictions on reproductive health care that result from this decision will not only have swift impact on people who can get pregnant and their families, it will also undermine critical areas of research, innovation, and progress toward more equitable health care outcomes. Among the areas of concern: fertility treatments like IVF; personal data collection and the ability to drive research; a limiting of new investment and curbing of health care innovation more broadly; and the introduction of new obstacles for women founders.”

What Happens When Your Femtech Startup Can’t Use Social Media For Marketing? - Features the founders of women’ health and wellness startups Ruth Health, Dipsea, and The Lowdown, and the creative ways they are using to market their products after getting flagged on social media for ‘innapropriate’ content.

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Thank you for reading! 🥰 If you enjoyed reading this issue, please share it with a friend. Have a relaxing Sunday and a successful week ahead!

Anamaria

Founder & Writer of FemWealth